Grief

Grieving is a long process. In our culture, where you get three days off work if your Grandmother dies, we seem to think that you can make a tidy package of grief and be done with it in a few weeks or months. The reality is that grieving can go on for a lifetime. My brother died thirty two years ago, and last year on his birthday I cried all day. When I see other people with their siblings, I feel the loss all over, in deeper ways than I did in the beginning. Grieving my childhood has been a process filled with potholes and dark hallways. I want to take the little girl who was left to fend for herself all morning in her highchair and hold her in my arms until she feels safe. Most of the time I do not dwell on the realities of my childhood, but once in a while something happens to cause those feelings of fear, loneliness, and unworthiness to rise to the surface. Then I find myself drowning in grief. Recent events have weakened my normal resilience and left me vulnerable to these issues. I am looking at this as a gift. I do not learn anything when things are good. I am normally strong and positive. I need to be knocked down hard before I become open to the lessons I need to continue to grow. When I am hurting, I am learning. We are three people: the person we think we are, the person other people think we are, and the person we really are. My goal in recovery is to find the person I really am. In the process of learning who I am, I have to grieve the losses that have helped to shape me. I don't like it, but as my friend Eva used to say, "Nobody said you had to like it".